In Madrid one year ago today 191 innocent people were unceremoniously
murdered.

It's easy to see what we want to out of this ghastly event. Whether
you see it as the natural consequence of a neo-con foreign policy, or
an unspeakable tragedy with no possible justification, I humbly ask
that you forget that aspect for a moment. It doesn't matter. Any
political comments in this post should be deleted.

Murder on such a large scale is incomprehensible to most of us. Laci
Peterson is murdered and it's a tragedy worthy of countless hours of
news coverage. Hundreds of civilians jump to their deaths out of a
flaming tower, leaving not much more than a sound like a gunshot and a
reddish smear on the pavement, and the predominant reaction is
confusion.

Occasionally some detail pokes through the confusion and brings the
reality of the event home. What finally got me on 9/11 was the throngs
of people putting up missing person posters around NYC, quite
obviously a futile attempt to pretend their loved one wasn't dead, if
just for a little longer.

The detail that brought the Madrid atrocity home to me was the
cellphones. People near the bodybags in Madrid reported hearing a
steady stream of cellphone rings coming from the line of bodybags. The
only consolation is that maybe the recorded voice of their loved ones
heard for the last times before the battery went dead brought some
solace to them.